So there.

Ten pounds of flour worth--ten loaves and 12 rolls.

Challah catastrophes

You'll notice that that's in the plural.

1. I add all the liquid ingredients for my challah (7 eggs, plus honey, sugar, oil etc.), all the dry ingredients less the flour, a little bit of flour, and start the mixer mixing. Only it doesn't mix--the mixer blade on my Bosch pops up. I turn off mixer, reach in to set the blade in correctly, and instead of setting it correctly I suddenly realize that the entire contents of the bowl are rapidly draining out the 1.5-inch-diameter hole at the bottom of the bowl, because the bolt that holds the blade assembly together was not in and fell out. So I now have all the liquid and whatever of the solid ingredients have dissolved, all over my floor.

2. After cleaning this up (which took a LONG time), I go to open bag of flour #2--only to see the inside of the bag festooned with webs. Because it's infested with bugs. Heavily, heavily infested. I waste some time sifting, then realize that this is never going to work because it's organic whole wheat and I'm sifting out half the flour and probably none of the insects. I toss entire $6.19 bag of flour into trash, and open bag of flour #3, which looks OK.

3. I hazard guesses at how much of which ingredients are missing from the challah, add them, and start the dough mixing again in my smaller Bosch bowl. Then I realize that the counter I have just scrubbed (salmonella, y'know) is again covered with raw eggs, because the wet ingredients are not being incorporated into the now hard and solid lump of dough that was left when I lost the liquid the first time.

4. I will not be defeated! I unplug mixer, squish ingredients together by hand, add more water and oil and another couple of eggs, and turn the mixer back on. The dough looks lovely.

5. And then I notice that the top of the mixer, the plastic splash ring, is not sitting right. That's because the solid lump of dough that was revolving around the bowl pushed up against it hard enough to snap all three latch points, irretrievably destroying splash ring on my I-don't-want-to-remember-how-much-it-cost Bosch bowl. I toss splash ring into garbage.

6. I briefly consider fishing through the dough for the broken pieces of plastic, then laugh bitterly at the idea, because these pieces of plastic are, well, deadly, and it's not even a tiny little bit worth it. I toss entire batch of challah into garbage.

7. And start a new one. Stay tuned. I'm going to take out the garbage.

School

The first day of school was last week. Barak is going to the nursery school attached to the local bais yaakov, so is enjoying what will probably be his last year of coeducational schooling until college at least; Iyyar started a playgroup run by a friend of mine. Barak is, I think, mostly excited by the fact that he now goes to school via carpool, meaning that he gets to drive in a car every single day. This, for my car-deprived son, is a Very Big Deal. He is, fortunately, not in the same class as the infamous Dovie, although they do see each other occasionally. I asked Barak if Dovie was his friend and was told, "He's not very nice to me." But he hasn't brought it up and didn't seem bothered, so I left it alone. Barak does have some other friends from his last year's playgroup, two of whom I know to be really nice boys, so that's all good.

And Iyyar is having a blast. One of the things I didn't post much about but that has been a big part of the last couple of weeks is that a friend of mine (who I think I'm going to call Yehudis, now that the blog is open again) has been in the hospital, twice, with her baby, who had Kawasaki disease. (White, female baby. Go figure.) Yehudis does Iyyar's playgroup, but since she'd just gotten back from the hospital with a still-sick baby, had her mother helping her. The playgroup is in the basement, and the baby was upstairs with her Bubbe. Not surprisingly, the baby spent some part of the morning crying. This distressed Iyyar, apparently; when he got home, he spent a treat deal of time informing me, urgently: "Baby crying. Want. Imma." And, "Baby tired. Nap. Baby needa nap." Then a few minutes would go by, and he'd tell me again. "Baby. Want. Imma!" I told him I knew, but the baby was fine. He didn't believe me, and looked at me like I was being... well, negligent.

The next morning I told Yehudis this. She was not surprised. In fact, Iyyar had taken the baby's welfare upon himself as a personal responsibility, and had spent much of the morning tailing Yehudis, trying to make her realize that HER BABY WAS CRYING AND WASN'T THERE SOMETHING SHE SHOULD BE DOING ABOUT THAT?! Yehudis kept reassuring Iyyar that the baby was with her Bubbe, and she was fine, but Iyyar was unconvinced. "Baby CRYING." Don't you hear her?! What are you, heartless? You've got a crying baby up there, lady!

I found it kind of sweet. :)

Iyyar, as you may have noticed, is now talking a lot more. If I give him something he doesn't want to eat, he hands it back with a disdainful "No gink gyou." He tells me about his day--about the baby crying, and also about playing with trucks. ("Go school! Trucks! Fun!") and remembers, mournfully, his cousins and friends from the summer. ("Want Yanky. Want Yaakov Naya. Play. Fun...") Abba is very much the Preferred Parent these days--sometimes I go into Iyyar's room when he wakes up at night and get, "No want Imma. Want Abba!" Okay then. Iyyar is also now enjoying Abba's fabulous bedtime stories. "Dory off from? Dory off from?" Meaning, are you going to start the story from where you left it off last night?

Avtalyon, the only one in the house who doesn't have to get out the door in the morning (well, except that of course he does, because I take him with me) is now crawling like a maniac. He has totally skipped that stage of sitting up, playing with toys, but not being mobile; he can get himself nicely into a sitting position, although he does still wobble a little. He's eating rice cereal, oatmeal, mashed bananas, applesauce and mashed peas; last night he slept from 7 pm till 7 am only waking up at 11 and 5. I think. At least, those were the only times I woke up...

By the numbers

When I was growing up, I was always a little bit heavy. Not enormously, but enough to feel self-conscious, and certainly enough to get teased.

When I went off to college, and suddenly found my diet in my own control, I dropped a lot of weight--more than I should have initially, but then it stabilized pretty soon and I stayed within 5 lb of the same weight for about ten years.

Then came the tail end of my grad school career, and all the stresses that came with it, and I gained about 15 lb. I moved to New York, joined a gym, did Weight Watchers, and lost it all by my wedding; then, um, I was married, and gained it all back.

By the time I got pregnant with Barak, about five months after I got married, I was at a weight that horrified me at the time but at the moment would look pretty great. Let's call that weight X. X, for the record, is the maximum "healthy weight" for someone of my height, according to the charts.

By the end of my fourth month, I was at X + 13.

When Barak was born, I was at X + (gulp) 41.

By the time Barak was 1, I was back down to X + 5. That was pretty good, but a few months later, before I got pregnant with Iyyar, I was back up to X + 10.

Then I was pregnant with Iyyar, and got up to X + 46.

I never lost all of it--the lowest I got to after Iyyar was X + 15.

Then I got pregnant with Avtalyon, and managed not to gain quite as much weight--probably because I was carrying so much extra to begin with. Final weight with Avtalyon was also X + 46.

By the end of my maternity leave, I was at X + 25. When we left for Israel, I think I was at X + 22.

When we got back, I was at X + 14. As of last week, I'm at X + 11.

Let's be clear--X + 11 is not a great, healthy weight for me. But it's the thinnest I've been since before Iyyar was born. I'm fitting into clothes--I'm wearing a skirt now, in fact--that I haven't worn since before Iyyar was born. I categorically do not look pregnant. My face isn't as round. It feels pretty good.

I'm really, really hoping I can keep it up all the way back down to X. I have no aspirations right now to get down past that, and in fact gave away my whole size 6 wardrobe last year. But I'll admit it. I've got my eye on those 8s.

Not that you needed me to tell you this

But holy cow, the price of food. Food and household items both, but mostly food.

I just got back from a trip to Target and the supermarket. I spent $292. I did not buy any meat or cheese or ANY prepared foods. No ice cream, either--no treats at all, actually. At Target I stocked up on diapers and tissues and bought paper goods for yom tov; I got milk, juice, batteries, garbage bags, rice cereal and oatmeal, soap, and so on. I did buy a new tabletop ironing board ($9.99) and two boxes of actual Pampers, at $20 each--I usually put generic diapers on Iyyar and Avtalyon but they just don't do it for overnight. At the supermarket I bought a lot of flour (for yom tov baking--25 lb of King Arthur) and five boxes of Cheeries (5/$10). Grape juice for kiddush, bread, sandwich bags, lots of yogurt, gefilte fish and fish sticks (okay, that probably counts as a prepared food item), granola, and a new parve knife ($5.49) to replace the one the tenants whatevered. Whole-wheat pretzels for lunches. I did not buy organic anything, except for rice cereal, yogurt and milk. I've given up on the organic whole wheat flour--at $9.99/5 lb, it's over my organic price threshold.

There were other things, but all along the same lines. Nothing fancy. Mostly generics. Our kids aren't even eating that much yet. No meat or cheese or produce--just my periodic trip to replenish supplies of the things that I can't buy, or that are very expensive, on our local shopping street. And it won't even last me the month.

It's not that we don't have money to buy food. B"H we absolutely do. It's just the sticker shock, and thinking about how much food and gas are eating into the budgets of people who don't have the wiggle room that, B"H, we currently have. I can't help feeling guilty walking out of the supermarket having dropped a couple hundred dollars, but it's not as though I did anything wrong buying Cheerios and milk. Cheerios on sale, even.

Dinner tonight: scallion-heavy salmon patties, which I made with canned salmon from Trader Joe's; brown rice with peanut butter and umeboshi vinegar, one of MHH's favorite concoctions; a caramelized onion on the side.

What did you have?

Things that still surprise me

1. Identifying myself to my friends' children as Mrs. Uberimma.

2. Saying, "I need to be home by quarter to eight, my husband has night seder."

3. Paying for my milk and vegetables in school money.

4. Being recognized on the street, and greeted, by four-year-olds.

5. Having other people's kids hanging out at my house.

6. Packing lunches for my kids, every night.

7. Writing mitzva notes.

8. Sending Barak over to the men's side to find Abba.

9. Picking my kid up at nursery school, with all the other mothers.

10. Lighting five candles.

When we were waiting at the emergency room on Thursday, me and Iyyar and Ada, I saw Iyyar climb up on something perilous to check out the fish in the fish tank. He was two steps away, so I jumped up and had my hands out before he fell. I heard someone say, "Wow, she's fast." And Ada said, "She has three boys."

And that surprised me, too. It surprises me still.

Sunday night

Sorry I couldn't come up with a better name for this post. It's been that kind of a weekend.

Thursday's ER visit? From the perspective of today, it was nothing. Iyyar was limping. He was holding his foot funny. I got worried--it didn't seem to hurt him a bit but he was positively hobbling. I called the pediatrician and talked to the nurse, who said to bring him in in the morning. Ada, Babysitter of Amazingness and Inexplicable Baby Voodoo-Master, was consulted via email from her day (well, night, really) job at the local children's ER. Might be a toddler fracture, she said.

Hmm, I thought. If I wait till the morning, take him to the pediatrician, he gets sent for an x-ray, then if it needs a cast... it's going to be all day, and I'll have to either take the baby to the ER (no way) or leave him all day (no way--he still won't take a bottle from anyone other than Ada, cf. Inexplicable Baby Voodoo-Master, above.) What to do? Well, since Ada was actually working that night, the most reasonable course of action seemed to be just taking him to the ER for x-rays after Avtalyon had gone to sleep.

Which I did. Iyyar, for the most part, had a great time--he got to see Ada, he got to play with toys, he was plied with Bamba which he happily piled into the vomit basins conveniently provided, he pulled ear-probe covers out of their dispensers and discovered a DVD player with buttons within his (carefully supervised) reach. There were stickers. There were fish tanks, one with an actual shark. We got, thanks to Ada, total red-carpet treatment, and she hung out with us as much as she could sneak away from her desk. Iyyar was delighted to be reunited with his buddy; I had very little to do but trail along after them hauling the carseat.

And then there was the x-ray, which was less fun, but! Ada helped! and there were bubbles! Note to self--spring for the additional cab fare and use more distant children's ER if any further ER trips are necessary. Especially if it's Ada's night on.

Verdict: no break, it's probably muscular, keep an eye on it and bring him to your pediatrician if it's not better in five days. Ada was bidden farewell ("Right back? Rika right back?") and I tried not to feel too much like chopped liver, we took a cab home and Iyyar passed out in the back seat.

All in all, no big deal.

Fast-forward to Friday morning.

I was sitting working, the kids were with Asnat, and I heard the door open at around 10. It was MHH. What's up with that? He's supposed to be at the beit medrash, preparing his d'var Torah for the Shabbaton tonight. He came in--staggered, actually, and stood there, swaying. I took a look and realized that he was a) gray like dishwater, b) sweating profusely, and c) looking really, really ill. "I don't feel good," he said, unnecessarily. "Go eat something," I said. "Did you eat?"

"I did eat!" he said. "I had some heartburn this morning, so I took a Prevacid [he takes it for reflux] and then I had breakfast and went to kollel. And then I started really sweating. I thought I was going to throw up. Now I feel really nauseous. And really tired. I'm going to go lie down."

Nausea... heartburn... profuse sweating... dizziness... gray... fatigue...

DING DING DING DING

"I think we're going to the ER." I said.

"What?"

"Let's go to the hospital."

"That's what Marvin said."

"Who?"

"Marvin at the kollel. He wanted to take me to the ER. He said I was dia... diaphor..."

"Diaphoretic. Sweaty."

"Yeah."

"Well, let's go."

"Why?"

"Because you might be having a heart attack. I'm calling a cab." I called the cab, picked up the sleeping baby to give him a top-up nurse, and we left.

We got to the ER and boy there is nothing like coming in with that list of symptoms to have them swing you right past everyone else in the waiting room and get you hooked up to a bunch of machines really really fast. The EKG looked fine, his heart sounded fine, and he was looking distinctly better. "Do you still feel sick?" I asked him, an hour later, as he was hanging out on the gurney in a hospital gown covered with stickers and wires. "Um, no," he said. "Just really really tired."

The attending came in, and explained that while they were sure he had not had a big heart attack, he might still be having a little one, and they would like to admit him, do two more blood tests six hours apart, and then put him on a treadmill in the morning. Which would be Shabbos. MHH looked horrified. "You're staying," I told him. He called his local rav, asked a few shailos, and that was that.

Did I mention that my cell phone was not working? No? Well, it wasn't, so I was checking in with the babysitter with the ER phone. I called myself a cab, waited until MHH was back from getting a chest X-ray, called a few people to find someone who could run food, clothes, and Shabbos supplies back to the hospital, and then went back home. Starving baby, worked-up kids (especially Barak, who, remember, had seen me disappear to the hospital with Iyyar the night before), and... you have GOT to be kidding me... no electricity. Which meant no phones, because we have VOIP.

No food, no power, no phones, a whole bunch of people to call and plans to cancel and stuff to do in three hours before Shabbos. Asnat lent me her cell phone, which was a lifesaver; I called Ada to tell her that our Friday night plans were off, and she offered to come over anyway and help out, which was lifesaver #2; getting three kids ready for Shabbos when you have notice is one thing, but doing it all on your own with no notice, a husband in the hospital, and, oh yes, NO FOOD, PHONE, OR ELECTRICITY is something else. There was no possibility of just eating what was in the fridge--we'd just been in Israel for two months and there was nothing in the fridge or freezer. So I loaded everyone in the stroller, and off we went to the bakery (where I immediately caved to Barak's request for a $2 slice of cake--which he will remember forever), the grocery store (since when is roast beef $18/lb?! we'll have the bologna) and the produce store (where I bought orange juice and cookies, planning to take the bribery route through the evening). We went home, calling Grandma E on the way; I fed the kids dinner, and then Ada turned up and gave them baths and got them into pajamas while I took a shower. MHH's new rosh kollel (did I mention that the shabbaton we were supposed to go to was the first shabbaton of his brand-new job?) called and then came over with food; I put the baby down, and was about to light when Jenny from work called and, as if inspired by a host of psychic angels, offered to come over the next day to check in on us and on MHH in the hospital. I gratefully accepted, lit, let the kids eat their cake, Ada and I put them to bed, we sat in the kitchen schmoozing and looking at baby pictures for a while, and then she left and I went to bed. By myself.

Let me state for the record that I cannot imagine being a single parent. No--let me restate that. I have imagined it, and the very idea fills me with unspeakable horror. I know that I could not handle it, practically or emotionally. I don't know how anyone does. I couldn't sleep; the baby couldn't sleep; I ended up taking him into bed with me for company and nursing him most of the night. The kids woke up out of sorts and asking for Abba; they were acting up within minutes, and I yelled at them by 9, instantly regretting it. We went outside to play; Jenny came, and went off to check in on MHH. At this point my stomach was in the kind of tight hard knot it has not been in since... can't remember when actually. My legs felt like water. To say that I was in a state of increased anxiety would be, you know, an inadequate descriptor of the situation.

We came inside and had lunch; I was about to put Iyyar down for a nap when I heard a familiar knock on the back door. Jenny came in. "He's fiiiiiiine," she said, reassuringly. "They're discharging him. "

"Really? He's fine?"

"He's so totally fine. I think he's milking it, actually. He's being pretty pathetic. Guys!"

??

The rest of the day was better, from my point of view, although the non-husband-related anxiety was pretty high again later when I visited a good friend whose baby was clearly in need of a return trip to the hospital from which she'd just been discharged. We got home at around 6, the boys had their Shabbos yogurts, Avtalyon had some rice cereal (or maybe it was cement--hard to tell, they look the same), and everyone went to bed. MHH came home, looking totally fine; he was kicking himself for not just catching a ride home with Jenny at lunchtime. What did they think had happened? No idea, really; sleep deprivation, dehydration, reflux, vagus nerve something, who knew. He wasn't supposed to stop taking his reflux medicine, and was supposed to check in with his GP.

He went over to the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet to get his reflux medicine and I was about to leave the kitchen when I heard a strangled sound. "What's this?!"

"What?"

"What's this? This isn't my reflux medicine."

"No, that's mine."

"What is it?"

"Those are the class-A controlled-substance narcotics the neurologist gave me when I had that thing with the nerve in my face."

Silence.

"Ohhhhhhhhh. Oh no."

"Um. Is that what you took yesterday?"

"But it says [our last name]! I thought it was mine!"

"That's the last name of everyone in this house. You took one?"

"I... I think I... I took one, and then I ate breakfast, and then I went to the kollel, and that's when I got sick."

"About half an hour later, then?"

"I guess." Pause. "Could it have really made me that sick?"

I googled the drug in question (I'm fast-forwarding a little here--I'm tired of typing) and read off the list. "Common side effects include dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness, vomiting, drowsiness... less common side effects include allergic reaction, depressed respiration, irregular heartbeat, anxiety..."

So...

B"H, he's fine. He will be reading prescription labels more carefully in future. We will be keeping our respective medicines in different locations in future. And all of us will be trying to get some more sleep.

Jig.

We're back.

Where to begin?

With the trip? The trip was fine. The kids did great, and nobody threw up. Getting out the door was crazy, what with the 4 am motzai Shabbos departure, and neither MHH or I slept at all that night. But we did it, and even successfully got our VAT back at the airport, which is not for the faint of heart. Most of our luggage made it--just the strollers and Barak's booster seat were left in London, which turned out not to be a problem at all because a) it meant we could all fit in one van and b) British Airways gave us a new carseat! "We have to! Otherwise how would you get home from the airport?" More reasons to love BA.

Then we got home. The less said about that the better. The tenants, we immediately noticed, had not cleaned. The had not cleaned the stove, or the sink, or the fridge, and where are all those fruit flies coming from? Sheets dirty in washing machine... are there ANY clean sheets? Pretzels in couch, toys, all over house, and let's not think about Pesach. Okay, it could be worse... wait... are those my fleishig glasses in the milchig cupboard? Where are the sink tubs that I use in my treif sinks? They're in the guest room?! What have they been washing dishes in all summer? Is that a fleishig spatula in the parve drawer? And what's this pile of flatware in my fleishig dish rack... milchig, milchig, fleishig, parve, parve, milchig...

[sound of uberimma's head exploding]

The father of the family is the principal of an orthodox school. Nuff said. We're not sending our kids there...

We are about 70% unpacked, and the kids are about 50% over their jet lag. One duffel bag left to unpack, and several baskets' worth of clean laundry piled on my bed--it's hard to put away laundry when both rooms where clothes are kept contain sleeping children at the only time of day in which I am at liberty to put laundry away.

MHH started his new job a couple of days ago, and B"H so far so good. I met the other kollel wives and felt a little bit fish-out-of-water-y, but I'm sure it will be fine.

Back to work now. Next up: our exciting late-night trip to the local children's emergency room. Don't worry, everyone's fine, and Iyyar has lots of new stickers and play-doh now...

Collected

I keep thinking during the day of various things I want to blog about, and then when I sit down at the computer... do I really need to finish this sentence? I don't, do I?

Usually when this happens I sit down and write a list post. Today, I think I'll take more of a stream-of-consciousness approach. Bear with me, please.

I just got back from a skirt sale someone was holding at a neighbor's apartment. I went for the skirts but stayed for the shmoozing--it was mostly Anglos, a couple of new olim, and one who just got here a few weeks ago. She told me that she came on her pilot trip in January and saw nice rentals in this neighborhood for about $650. By the time she came in June, there was nothing--not even yucky little apartments--for under a thousand. They did not have the money for a nice place and did not want to live somewhere gross, so ended up renting something a half-hour walk away from the religious neighborhood. Not the way to an easy klita.

The religious neighborhood is, in fairness, spreading out and up the hill; the mayor does not want to zone any of the new neighborhoods being built as religious, feeling that the city should be integrated, but of course the religious families want to live together (in walking distance to the religious schools, happy minyans, and so on). Of course, as the desirable neighborhood spreads, so do the rents. I am hoping that in two years, our current timetable, the following three things will happen:

1. The Israeli real estate market will tank as it has already done in the states, making things more affordable;
2. The American real estate market will recover, such that it will be possible to sell our house without taking a massive loss (the woman I talked to tonight took a $70k loss on the sale of her house--doesn't bear thinking about);
3. The dollar will recover, at least to the level of, say, 4 NIS to the dollar.

Hey, a girl can dream, right? And while we're at it, how about good jobs for me and the mister?

Anyway...

The good news (did I write this already?) is that Asnat is staying with us for, it appears, another year; she can only stay until 12:30 so I will have to work with that. The bad news is that I still, as of this writing, have no way to get Barak home from nursery school in the afternoon. I have a ride in the morning, but that's it. So for now, I have to pick Iyyar up at playgroup 15 minutes early and walk the mile and a bit to get Barak. It's okay for right now, but once it gets cold it won't be.

Avtalyon is still not-quite-crawling. He gets up on all fours, pushes back with his feet, and propels himself forward a few inches while collapsing on his stomach; by doing this a few times in rapid succession, he gets around quite nicely, although not fast enough yet to be really dangerous. One thing he just started today was pushing his tush up and to the side, in one of the early stages of getting into a sitting position unassisted--I guess I'd better work with him on sitting, because for now he topples right over. He is so happy lying on his stomach, doing the swim and watching everything around him, that I don't spend nearly as much time with him as I probably should. Barak, at this age, demanded constant attention--he was too big to want to lie on his back, couldn't roll over or sit, hated being on his stomach, and basically either was in my arms or crying pretty much all the time. Good thing he was my first, hm?

Uh-oh. Avtalyon's awake and kvetching in his crib. He's already had his late-night snack, so I'm hoping he'll go back to sleep on his own. For the last couple of nights he's been waking up a few times in the night and then declaring morning at 5:15 am. It's getting a little wearing. Today I put Iyyar in his crib for a time-out--I don't remember now why--when Avtalyon was already napping. I thought I'd lie down on the couch for the allotted two minutes of Iyyar's confinement and guess what? Yup. I fell asleep. I don't know how long I was asleep for but suffice it to say that Iyyar was royally displeased when I finally came to rescue him.

Speaking of Iyyar, his phrase of the month is "cool water!" which is actually intended to be "cold water!" You have to be drinking water all the time here, and we usually keep a few emptied soda bottles full of water in the fridge. Although I don't think Iyyar really cares about the temperature in his sippy cup, he has heard us talk about cold water enough that he demands it himself. He also likes it when I give him ice and let him put it in there himself. "Iyyar do it! Iyyar do it by a self!"

He is also very fond of bicycles. The entry way of this building is a veritable parking lot of bicycles and strollers, and Iyyar wants them ALL. "Bike ull! Hell mut! Bike ull!" And he tries to climb on. Strangely, he has not at all been put off by the spill he took last week when we were in Beit El--three concrete steps down on a tricycle, landing on his face. One of his front teeth is now at a different angle than it was--think it'll fall out? I'm hoping not, baby tooth or no.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm tired and cranky. It's hot, I'm not getting enough sleep, the cost of living here is discouragingly high, we're leaving in a few days and I have a really intimidating amount on my plate both at work and at home. I'm hoping the people who rented our place left it clean, but there will still be a fair amount of apartment reassembly, not least of which will be putting away all the stuff I tossed in the back bedroom before we left. And returning the borrowed baby saucer to my SIL. And packing. And getting food for the trip. And cleaning the vomited-on car seat. And repacking the Shas, Shulchan Aruch, and assorted seforim into boxes sized in accordance with BA's luggage allotments. And so on.

Ah, well, it's all good. And tomorrow I'm taking Barak on a quick trip (without Avtalyon, so it'd better be quick) to the Tachana Merkazit for one last tichel-buying expedition. Hey, they're cheaper than seforim--and a lot lighter to pack.

Six days

Not the war. How much time we have left here. Six days.

This morning I took Barak up to the kanyon, otherwise known as the mall; we took the bus, did a big grocery shop at Mr. Zol (literally, Mr. Cheap, but it isn't at all--Sheffa Shuk was a lot less expensive), and I am pleased to report that I successfully managed to order grocery delivery in Hebrew. I wasn't totally sure it would arrive, but it did. Barak left his hat in the store, but we went back and got it, and then took the bus back home.

We spent, just for the record, a little over NIS 500 on groceries today. It was what I would consider a normal week's grocery shop, not counting fruit, vegetables, milk, or bread, which I usually buy daily. That's around $150. There were some expensive items in there--a pack of diapers, a five-pack of wipes--but those are normal components of our grocery tab. I did not buy anything along the lines of paper goods, cleaning supplies, shampoo, or anything like that. I also did not buy any meat, although I did buy some extra things to take back to the States, which probably balanced that out. This means that I can reasonably expect to spend around $800 a month on food here--about a quarter of what I could expect my monthly take-home income to be. And our kids aren't even eating that much yet. And we have all boys.

How do people do it here? The food costs more. The housing costs the same. Transportation, so far as buses, is slightly cheaper and much better, and maybe clothes are cheaper, but the quality is lower so they don't last as long. I know that part of how expensive everything feels is the weak dollar, but even with the dollar being weak American salaries are still way higher than Israeli salaries. How in the world does anyone buy an apartment here, let alone a house or a car? I feel like I've asked everyone in the world this and the most common answer is a shrug and a gaze off into the middle distance. I've had a few people tell me that they rely on nissim, which is one approach I guess but it's not one I'm entirely comfortable with myself.

Yes, tuition is much lower here. That's huge. But we're not really paying that yet, so we're not feeling it as much.

I'd better go help Abba get the kids out of the bathtub. More later.

Not for those with fear of heights

That's Iyyar, on our mirpeset. To the left of him, outside of the picture, is Jerusalem; to the right is a whole lotta desert. After I checked out this apartment for the first time and went back to Ramat Beit Shemesh, I tried to explain to my husband what it looked like here.

"It's really... biblical." I said. "Well, I mean, of course it's biblical. It's Israel. But it's biblical in a kind of apocalyptic way. It's just really, really, really intense."

Which it is.

Biblical. And intense.

Moving on

We're clearing out of this apartment today and heading to a new place in Maale Adumim, where we'll be for a little under two weeks. It's kind of incredible that we've been here for over seven weeks already--didn't I just unpack these bags?

A lot has happened since I posted last. Barak has spent the last couple of weeks at Camp Kinderlach--yes, really--which he loves so much that a mere "Barak, do you want to go to camp tomorrow?" in a mildly threatening tone is enough to get him to go to bed. Iyyar has started talking like you wouldn't believe--he's gone from "Ah wanna dat!" to "I need da oder one blankie also!" and, waking from a bad dream, "I no gike it DODDIE!"--two days after we came back from visiting a friend in Efrat with some of the sweetest dogs ever. And yesterday a new phase in brotherly love was reached, with both Barak and Iyyar wrestling on the couch and onto the floor--while giggling.

Avtalyon is crawling like the minute hand of a clock--if you glance at him he doesn't look like he's going anywhere, but if you glance back a couple of minutes later, whoa, how did he get all the way over there, and is that Barak's sneaker in his mouth?!

More later--speaking of the baby, he just woke up.

More firsts

Iyyar's first really complete sentence, as of about five minutes ago.

Background (as always): as some of you may know I have, er, a certain fondness for Diet Coke. Nothing, you know, addiction-like or anything, certainly. Just a healthy--um--I mean--a fondness. Right.

Anyway... where were we. Oh yes. So, while Barak sees me drink Diet Coke and has long since accepted that he never, ever gets any, Iyyar has not given up hope. But he knows that the direct ask will get him nowhere. So he tries subterfuge. He doesn't want Diet Coke--no no. He wants water. That water, that I have. The kind that just happens to be cold, black and fizzy. And in a Diet Coke bottle.

I just came back from dropping Barak off at gan and was sitting at the kitchen table drinking what my mother used to refer to as the Elixir of Life when Iyyar noticed. "Amma? Water? Please?"

"Nice try, Iyyar. No. That's not for you."

Brightly and winningly: "That water! That water please!"

"No. Sorry. Not a chance."

Lifting froggy cup, eyes fixed purposely on prize, leaning forward in high chair, "I want that water in here!"

Look out, world...

Six months and a few days. For the record, Barak sat unassisted for the first time at around 8.5 months; both Barak and Iyyar started crawling at 10.5. Avtalyon isn't quite crawling, in that he hasn't worked out coordinating the movement of arms and legs at the same time. What he does, instead, is get up on all fours in sort of a downward dog yoga pose, push off with his feet, and propel himself a few inches forward on his belly; then he does the Baby Swim a little and starts the whole routine over. He can move quite a ways like this, with surprising speed.

Barak is loving camp, much more than he liked gan, probably because there is much less sitting still and doing of projects involved. And now that Barak is out of the house in the mornings again, I am having more of that one-on-one time with Iyyar that I was enjoying so much. Today, for the first time, he said "please"--not "bee" but actually "please." And he gave me bunches of hugs, when I sat on the floor, pretending to cry, and asked for them. The favorite word of the day, though, is "gawquit." As in, Iyyar spies jar of Nutella on counter and wants some: "Imma? Gawquit?" And then, winningly and irresistibly, "Please?"

Kein yirbu

Well, I did it--I made my first really awful Hebrew flub today.

First off, a little background. (Of course.) As I may have mentioned, this is a shmitta year, which means that Jews may not sow, plant, or otherwise work the land. This also means that Jews may not eat any produce of the land, which, as we understand it, refers to land in Israel that is owned by Jews.

So what does one do, practically speaking, when one wishes to, say, purchase a potato? One can do a few things. One can buy a potato from outside Israel. One can buy a potato from last year's crop. One can buy a potato that was grown on an elevated platform, or hydroponically, off the land. (Are there such things as hydroponic potatoes? I know they do tomatoes...) One can buy fruit that grew on its own, but that comes with its own set of complicated issues. Or one can buy produce grown by a non-Jew--in Hebrew, a nachri.

In Ramat Beit Shemesh, the produce store has two signs under every bin of produce: what kind of produce it is, and what its shmitta status is. So you might see, "Carrots--outside the land," or "Oranges--sixth year." Got that? Good.

Today, I wanted to buy grapes. I saw the sign that said "grapes," but no corresponding sign informing the prospective purchaser of their shmitta status. So I asked the store's owner. What I meant to ask, of course, was, "Were these grapes grown by non-Jews?" I probably should have kept it simple and just asked, "Zeh nachri?" which he would have understood as, "Is this nachri?" But no. I had to get ambitious. I went up to the owner and asked, politely, "Ha'anavim nachriim?" "Are these grapes non-Jews?"

As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized--but if I hadn't, the owner's reaction (highly amused) would have tipped me right off.

melllltiiiing...

No, not from the heat.

To expand a little on what's in the sidebar:

I grew up in New York, speaking English. My father was born in Hungary, and although I heard a lot of Hungarian growing up, I never really spoke it as a kid. I learned French starting in seventh grade, in public school, and by the time I started college spoke it well enough that I tested into a Francophone translation course. At the same time, I started speaking more Hungarian, and when I was 21 I went to Hungary for a year, where all the latent Hungarian kind of came out. By the end of the year, I was pretty close to fluent, although I still had trouble understanding specialized spoken Hungarian (for example, political news on TV and that kind of thing). I also took German that year. When I went back to America, age 22, I started taking an intensive Russian course, which I continued for two years; then I spent a summer in Russia, and did another two years of Russian after that, although much less intensive. I also started taking Hebrew, at the local Reform temple. After the summer in Russia, I was in England for a year (studying Russian) and also took a semester of Mandarin Chinese. When I got back to America after that year, I took an intensive Hebrew course for a semester; three years after that, I took a much less intense Hebrew course for close to a year, dropping out at Pesach right before Barak was born. My Hebrew a year ago was not great, but thanks to Asnat it's come a long way since last summer.

Oh, and I've also taken American Sign Language, the full set of ten courses offered by the New York Society for the Deaf. I've done some interpreting, but I don't have a license.

The functional result of all of this is close-to-fluent Hungarian, latently very good but currently quite rusty ASL, Russian and French, no Chinese to speak of, survival German, and, B"H, rapidly improving Hebrew.

When I am in Vienna, I can get around fine with my German. When I'm in Hungary, my Hungarian is totally fine. If I am around French or Russian people, my French or Russian picks up pretty quickly, and right now my Hebrew is as good as it's ever been. What I can't do, unfortunately, is switch from one to the other. And that is a problem, because we are in Israel. Specifically, we are in Ramat Beit Shemesh. So this morning, I spoke English to my husband and kids, Hebrew to Barak's madricha, Hungarian to my granny on the phone, and then had quite a long conversation in French (she thought I was Belgian!!) with the French lady at the pharmacy. Then I walked outside, and someone asked me, in Hebrew, where a particular beit knesset was.

I told her. In French.

If someone comes up to me today and tries to speak Russian with me, I think my brain will melt and drip out my ears.

Changeling

Within a week and a half, Avtalyon has gone from Screamiest Baby Ever to... how do I put this? The Kind of Baby I Thought Only Belonged to Other People.

He's amazingly good-natured, although that's kind of been there for a while. But last week, he started to sleep, well, more or less normally. As in, he takes three naps a day, two of them quite long (like 2 hours, sometimes more). I nurse him, plunk him in his crib, and--get this--walk away. He might fuss for a few minutes, mildly, but then goes to sleep. He's been waking up two or three times a night, but going right back to sleep, pretty much.

And babies around here have historically taken what one might term a relaxed approach to that whole developmental calendar thing. Barak and Iyyar both rolled both ways at around 8-9 months, crawled at 10.5 and walked at 14. Avtalyon, the day we got here (which was the day before he turned 5 months) started happily rolling both ways. If you put Barak down on his stomach even at 8 or 9 months, he'd just cry; Avtalyon, who turned 6 months on Friday, now gets up on his hands and knees and is showing every sign of wanting--desperately--to start crawling. You never really know when they'll decide to take off but I would not be surprised at this point if he did it, well, pretty soon.

Up, up, and...

Who among you has not considered that immortal question: if you had to choose between the power of flight and the power of invisibility, which would you choose?

Apparently, Avtalyon's already made up his mind.

Happiness is...

making two potato kugels for Shabbos, so you can eat half of one hot from the oven on Friday afternoon. With help from husband and children, of course.

The boy with the big red hat

You can't really see it in the picture, but the makolet in the background has a massive display of Bamba carefully calculated to drive passing toddlers mad with desire. "Bamba! Amma! Bamba! Amma! Bamba! PEEESE!"

Ulpan

I started ulpan last week. It rocks. It's two mornings a week, for an hour and a half, in the teacher's home; there are currently four students, all religious women, and the focus of the class is the practical Hebrew we all need to know. How to decode your arnona bill; what's in that note home from the teacher; reading supermarket shelves. Yesterday she brought an mp3 of paying her gas bill by phone and we listened to it with a vocabulary list. Awesome.

I have been repeatedly confirming my belief that there is no such thing as a useless word. Some are more useful than others, obviously, but you'll need 'em all eventually. To wit: my current favorite reading matter is The First Thousand Words in Hebrew. On the back cover, there's part of the page that covers "the garden," with some of the words I am less likely to need. Why didn't they put "the kitchen," or "the school"? No, it was "the garden," with words like "rake," "bird's nest," "tire," and "ladder." This is the page I find myself seeing again and again when the book is sitting next to me while I'm doing something else. "Ladder?!" I remember grousing to myself. "When am I going to next need to say that?"

Second day here, that's when--when I rolled my double stroller into the makolet, picked up a bag of pita, turned around (in a 9-point turn at least) and found that in those thirty seconds, a man with, you guessed it, a ladder had appeared behind me, climbed the ladder, disappeared through the canopy, and, basing a guess on my view of his knees, started repairing the top of the awning. I was stuck.

"Excuse me?" I called up through the canvas.

Nothing.

"Excuse me, sir? I cannot go."

Nothing.

"Sir! Your ladder! Your ladder is in my way and I cannot go!"

Instantly, his head popped back into sight.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" And he came down the ladder, folded it, and moved it so I could go.

And yesterday, I found out the word for "pound key," as in, "enter the number of your gas bill and press the pound key." Guess what it is? "Sulamit"--literally, "little ladder." Natch.

I've been trying hard to read and decode as much Hebrew as I can. Today, on the way up our street coming back from the evening park run, I saw a sign affixed to a gate, next to a huge tree loaded with brilliant magenta flowers that spilled over the fence and down to the sidewalk. I stopped and studied it for a minute and realized what it said (Deb, you will like this):

During the year of shmitta all flowers are ownerless.

Help yourself.

Dumbfounded

If you have been reading this blog for more than, oh, a week, you will know that Sleep and the Lack of It figures right at the forefront of our daily concerns. Barak, since birth, has been The Worst Sleeper Ever. Iyyar, when he was born, was better, but that didn't last long; by eight weeks or so he was as sleep-resistant as Barak.

But Avtalyon, right from the start, was different. He slept. He slept happily in his carseat, woke up to eat, and went right back to sleep, for the first month or possibly even two of his life. He did wake up to nurse at night, many times, but mostly you could nurse him and put him back down. Yes, he cried, because all babies cry, but I just never got anywhere close to the levels of sleep deprivation and exhaustion I hit with both Barak and Iyyar. I remember when Barak was four or five weeks old waking my husband up at 4 am in tears, literally sobbing, and saying to him, "You have to take the baby. You have to. If I don't sleep, I'm going to die." And I meant it.

With Iyyar, things didn't get really seriously bad until I went back to work. That was when the nightly screamfests began; from around 4 pm until at least midnight, he would scream and scream and scream and if I did finally get him to go to sleep, five minutes after I put him down he'd be up again.

Now, I do not live on a remote Internet-less island off the coast of Pitcairn, so I have indeed heard of that whole crying-it-out thing. I have read and heard a very great deal. And even though I will admit that I am both morally and emotionally opposed, desperation is a wonderful motivator and I tried it with both Iyyar and Barak. With Barak, I closed his door, went into my room, closed the door, turned on a fan right next to my bed, and went to sleep. I don't remember how old he was when I first did this--at least one, I think. Certainly he was standing, because when I went back into his room at 7 am and saw him, covered with snot to the knees, swaying perilously with exhaustion and misery as he gripped the side of his crib, face unrecognizeably swollen, and failing to scream any more because he had lost his voice--he was old enough to stand.

I've felt pretty bad about my mothing, but just the memory of that picture, and the realization of what that one night's sleep had cost, makes my stomach clench. Barak literally cried all night long. He cried through the dark and right through the dawn and about an hour past it. It's possible he slept somewhat, but I doubt it, because when I picked him up and cuddled him in the rocking chair he went right to sleep and I think slept almost the whole morning. He'd been up screaming for me long enough and hard enough to lose his voice, and it stayed lost for a couple of days.

It was a pretty strong disincentive to try that again.

Iyyar's screamy phase lasted from around 8 weeks or whenever it was to six months, when I tried a combination of swaddling him with a small stuffed dog inside and playing a noise machine that sounded like our dishwasher. (I'd tried everything else already. Can you tell?) Like magic, he suddenly started sleeping, and by about 10 months you could just stick him in his crib, wide awake, and he'd go to sleep on his own. No problem. But prior to that, I had tried crying it out, despite what had happened earlier (cf. "desperation," above) and it was a disaster; he'd cry for hours and hours (with me listening the whole time, crying myself, of course) and once he fell asleep he'd wake right back up again crying even harder ten minutes later. Awful.

Anyway, so when Avtalyon launched his own screamy phase when we got here, I didn't think it would last. It just wasn't his personality. So I thought, maybe it's jet lag. Maybe it's gas. Maybe he's teething. But whatever it was, it wasn't stopping, and I was spending most of my days holding a hysterical screaming baby who was kicking me and flailing at me and grabbing every part of me he could find, hard, and no matter how short you keep those little fingernails, that hurts. Up till then, he would do that, but it was like holding the Whomping Willow--you had to find a way to push in the secret knot that turns off the tree (in this case, pushing the pacifier into the mouth for long enough for him to start sucking it) and all was well. No more; the very notion of the pacifier was a horrible insult and enough to start the screaming going.

Yesterday, when I got frustrated enough to hit a wall with my hand without stopping to consider construction of said wall (steel-reinforced concrete) I decided it was time to try that whole crying-it-out thing. I nursed the baby. I changed him. I cuddled him. And when he was calm and very very tired, I put him in his crib and walked away.

He cried for an hour and twenty minutes, and then he fell asleep, and slept for three hours. Then he woke up to nurse, and I fell asleep nursing him, so we had our usual nighttime routine, but that was my fault really.

I did it again at naptime today. He cried for forty minutes, and slept for two and a half hours.

And I did it tonight. He cried for fifteen minutes. He's still asleep. Not only that, he didn't even object to being put in his crib, and played in there for a while before he even started to cry.

I'm pretty stunned. And while I'm not ready to give up nursing him at night, if this keeps up I'm about to become a much better-rested Imma. Stay tuned.

Updates

Sorry not to have been posting much. It's been busy, but in a good way. Some random items of possible interest:

1. Avtalyon has gone from My Easy Baby to The Screamiest Baby Ever. At first I thought it was jet lag, and now I think it is teething. Either way, this working at night thing has become... challenging. Barak and Iyyar have been going to bed much later than usual, because--well, because of a few things. One is that their bedroom has a skylight, and it is full of blazing sunshine until about 7:45 PM. I have realized that trying to put them to bed before then is totally hopeless. So now they go to bed a full hour later than they are used to, and often aren't asleep until close to 9, which is waaaay too late for children aged 2 and 4. Barak does okay with it, but Iyyar does not, and ends up taking three- or even four-hour naps to compensate--which puts him in good shape to jump up and down in his crib screaming till 9 pm. Vicious cycle, etc. In the meantime, Avtalyon is usually screaming his head off for hours on end, and I'm trying to calm him down while fielding the children and that whole speechwriting thing... well. It's been happening at some very odd hours indeed.

The official plan is that MHH is supposed to be the Parent On Call after 7 pm, at which time I'm supposed to be at work, but the trouble with that is his stubborn refusal to lactate and consequent inability to soothe the savage baby. We talked about that this evening and have some plans in mind for how we will deal with it in future. Stay tuned for how that one will work out.

2. The tichel-shopping expedition of last Thursday continued Friday morning. In belated answer to your question, israelmom, we're in Ramat Beit Shemesh (wanna come visit?) We were going to visit friends in Modiin over Shabbos, and I had to pick up MHH's Shabbos pants from the dry cleaner Friday morning, so I stopped by Helen's Hats in the shopping center to check out the tichel offerings there. And fortune smiled upon me. Allow a bit of backtracking, if you will; on Thursday, on the way in to Jerusalem, a South African woman was sitting in front of me on the bus with one of the nicest tichels I've ever seen. It was one of the long rectangular ones, and it was in shades of pink, brown, and sage green, which managed to be pretty and feminine and totally not pastel all at the same time. I will admit to a bit of covetousness, and to tapping her on the shoulder to ask where she got it. Alas, she didn't know where it had come from; it was a gift. And I didn't see it in any of the places I looked in Jerusalem. But on Friday, when I poked through the pile of 2-for-NIS-30 tichlach, there were two of them! I got one, and another one that was a nice loose black-and-white weave. Why oh why did it never occur to me to weave myself a tichel when I owned a loom?! It would have been the perfect thing. Of course, it would have required warping at 20 epi...

3. The jury is officially in. I want to live here. In fact, I never want to leave. Neither does Barak. MHH says that I have been actively brainwashing him into this conclusion but I think a lot of it is his own observation. He doesn't get monitored nearly as closely here as he does in the States. There are playgrounds every fifty meters, or so it seems. There is a playground literally downstairs from our building--with a falafel store, equipped with a slushy machine, right next to it. This is the Land of Bamba. There are children EVERYWHERE. They stay out late playing. He also gets to stay out late playing. It never snows. We have an elevator, and he gets to press the buttons. He has cousins here, and when we visit them he gets to play in the dirt out in the shchuna without any adults watching.

And did I mention that this is the Land of Bamba?

Anyway, Barak has informed me a few times that he likes Israel, he does not like the city where we usually live, and he just wants to "live in Israel the whole day." He has no plans to leave. I told him that we did have to go back to our usual place of residence, and he said no, he didn't want to. I explained that I hoped that we would come back here to live, and I hoped it would be soon, but in the meantime we did have to go back because we have an apartment there, and we don't have one here; all of his books and toys and all of my books and yarn and all of Abba's books and, um, books are there. So we at least had to go back and get them. He was okay with that--but I don't think my idea of a return timetable (probably two years, at the end of MHH's contract) and his (as soon as we can get everything boxed up) match up very well.

4. As I mentioned there is a park downstairs from us, known as "the falafel park," as well as a park right across the street, known as "the park with the ball thing," and another park on the way to gan, in front of the makolet, known (funnily enough) as "the makolet park." Barak likes the makolet park, probably because after 4 PM it is packed with children, and it also has some old-time playground equipment like a metal child-powered merry-go-round, a seesaw, and a slide. Iyyar also likes this playground, and whenever we pass it, usually on the way back from dropping Barak off at gan, he campaigns for a play stop. "Pay! Pay!" Unfortunately, even with the shtarkest sun hats ever and a lot of sunblock, midmorning visits to totally unshaded playgrounds with very young children are not a good plan.

5. We don't have AC here and it is actually fine. It would be very very very un-fine where we live in the States. But here, we open all the windows at night and turn on all the fans; in the morning we close the shades, and it stays reasonably cool all day.

6. I am now taking a conversational Hebrew ulpan, two mornings a week. It's great. Five women, all religious, and one teacher, also religious. I'm learning a lot. And B"H my Hebrew is really improving. Last Wednesday I managed to successfully return an item (a defective water bottle) to the store and get my money back--a feat which, if you are familiar with Israeli-style customer service, is not exactly easy. Before I went I practiced my intended arguments on my teacher, and she pronounced them all acceptable but warned that returning things in Israel was not easy even if you did speak the language. So I'm quite looking forward to reporting on my success in the morning. :)

7. The vegetables here are amazing. Everyone seems to be complaining about how you can't get as much, or the prices are much higher, during shmitta--but for me, the prices are about the same, the variety is all I need (except for the total lack of bananas that aren't otzer bais din), and oh, my gosh, the flavor is out of this world. Real tomatoes! Real onions! Real grapes! Tomato sandwiches on warm fresh pita!

8. And on the subject of pita, I have discovered that the bread here grows mold faster than any bread anywhere. Leave it on the counter for a day and there are white spots; leave it for four and you will have half-inch mounds of black festering mold that is hot enough to leave condensation inside the plastic. Yecch. All pita now goes directly into the freezer--it thaws fast enough.

9. Iyyar has always liked cottage cheese. Here, it is noticeably tastier (as is everything else) and it has become something of an obsession with him. Whenever he sees it go into the fridge, he reacts as Barak once did to the sight of Yobabies--with frenzied, passionate desire. "Hotchee! Hotchee! AWAAAANNNNAAAAA!"

10. And is it the climate or the food? I don't know, but whatever the cause, Iyyar's eczema is gone. Vanished. Disappeared completely. When we left, three weeks ago, it was getting bad enough to worry me: despite twice-daily applications of vaseline, he had it on at least half his face, with spots coming out on his arms and a few on his legs too, and it was steadily getting worse. All gone now. We are still putting vaseline on his face at night but I think it would be okay to stop--for the first time in almost a year, the chapped cheeks are totally gone.

I think that's the roundup--more as I think of it, bli neder.

... and first pigua.

Last Thursday, when I went to pick Barak up from gan, I was silently handed a slip of paper.

TRAGIC NEWS

We are deeply saddened to inform you that

Hodaya's aunt, her mother's sister, was murdered

in yesterday's terror attack. Hodaya's mother is

sitting shiva in Yerushalayim.

The mothers and fathers--gan pickup is much more equitable here than it is in the States, it seems--were coming and going with their kids, and I was standing there with Barak's tik in one hand and this slip of paper in the other. I hadn't even heard about the terror attack.

"What terror attack?" I asked the ganenet. She seemed shocked I hadn't heard.

"It was near the bus station. A tractor tipped over a bus, and ran over some cars." I explained that we were only here for the summer and didn't have a TV or radio--and I hadn't checked the news online since the day before. She told me, gently, that I should really get a radio. The children filtered out, one by one, and we were still there. I suddenly realized we were the last ones, and took Barak's hand and we left.

We walked home, Barak and I, and I bought him a slushy at the falafel store on the way, which he found a pleasant surprise--I don't usually do that. When we got back I checked the news and found out the details. And Hodaya's aunt was my age, with a baby my baby's age, and I could not help but look at my baby and think about her baby, and what it would be like for a six-month-old baby to suddenly go from having Imma all the time to having no Imma, ever again. No more nursing, no more cuddles, no more Imma. I picked up my baby, and held him tight, and tried not to think too much.

It is the most incredible disconnect, somehow, being here. Where we live here is incomparably safer than where we live most of the time. Where we live in America, I would never allow any of my kids to be out of my sight when outside, even for a moment. There have been muggings and attempted abductions and even a fatal shooting within a couple of blocks of our house, in the last few years. Here, I have no problem with letting Barak run down the steps to the entryway on one side of our building while I walk around the other side with the stroller. To go from our house to his gan, we cross one street--everything else is paths. I don't make him hold the stroller unless we are crossing the street, and I let him run ahead, which I also don't do in the States.

It's so much safer--and at the same time, you can be coming back from your well-baby checkup with your six-month-old and someone might murder you. Not kill you by accident. Murder you. Because they hate you and want to kill you, and they want to kill everyone like you. That's what jihad is.

Of course, having once worked at 50 Broadway across the street from a large smoking hole, I know very well that it is not really any more dangerous here than anywhere else. You can wake up one morning and go to your accounting job and be murdered sitting at your desk. Nowhere is safe, so better to be where we are supposed to be, better to be where we can defend ourselves. Because where we are is the first line of defense, and it is our line of defense.

So last Thursday, I met a friend for lunch and tichel-shopping at the central bus station, on Jaffa Street, right near the pigua the week before. I took my baby with me. And we took the bus.

Talking

Iyyar is starting to talk more, and much more expressively, and now that I am home with him while Barak is at school I get the benefit of it much more than I did before. Barak tends to kind of dominate the conversation when he is here, not surprisingly, and until now I was hardly ever with Iyyar without Barak there. So now I am hearing all kinds of gems.

For example: in general, I buy generic diapers, but I get Pampers for Iyyar and Avtalyon to use overnight because they leak less. Pampers have Elmo on them, so they are very popular with Iyyar, who is right there in the Elmo target age bracket. I brought a bunch of Elmo diapers for the trip, and now Iyyar is, sadly, out of them (and into generic Titulim, which seem fine) while Avtalyon still has a stack left. A couple of days ago, I was putting Avtalyon into a clean diaper with Elmo on it, while Iyyar watched--rather resentfully, as it turned out. "No want it!" he told me emphatically, lips pushed out in a pout, shaking his head firmly for emphasis. "No want it Elmo baby tooshie!" If I can't get Elmo, NOBODY gets Elmo.

Speaking of Elmo, he is very much a fan. He refers to all Muppets generically as Elmo, but does also identify Ernie (uh-nee), Big Bird (bih buh), Grover, (go wuh) and Cookie Monster (kumana!) Diction may not be his strong point, but expressiveness is. He does the best faces, and also gives the best hugs; if you ask him for a hug, he'll usually say no, but if you then act all hurt and pretend to cry, he'll rush up to you, fling his arms around you, and carol "hug!" Better than that it getteth not.

He's got a new name for Barak, who is now "Ayyar!" (funnily enough). When we drop Barak off at school, Iyyar is often perturbed: "Where Ayyar go?" And sometimes, when waking up from a nap or in his high chair, Iyyar will call roll.

"Abba? Where Abba go?"

"Abba's davening."

"Ayyar?"

"Barak's at school."

"Naya?"

"Binyamin's home."

"Ah koh?"

"Yaakov's at home too."

"Baby?"

"Baby's shluffing."

"Baby oofing?"

"Right, he's shluffing."

Then, seriously, "Oh. Kay."

When he sees a park, which happens roughly every sixty seconds around here, he demands to avail himself of it ("pay! pay!") and when he sees the falafel store, he knows just what he wants "Ah foo! Ah foo!" And he's developed a habit, clearly derived from his big brother, of calling me in a very peremptory fashion. "Ah MA!" he bellows, righteously, sometimes whacking me insistently on the closest body part (and getting told off for potching). Pay attention to me NOW!

And, of course, he lives to go outside ("annai!") and eat, well, just about anything, but especially cheese ("shee"), milk, ("muk!"), bananas ("na na") and anything that I am eating ("DAT!")

B'derech

First shabbos in the holy land

I will confess it didn't begin totally auspiciously--there was much screaming and jumping around at bedtime. But everyone was in bed by the time Abba go home from shul, the table was set, and, for the first time in (cough cough), I actually davened maariv. So amazing--I could look out the window and see the orange sun sitting on the horizon, and when I came back down from putting Avtalyon back to sleep it had just vanished, right at shkia. I know of course that this is just a function of being on the fifth floor, but still--it's pretty cool and we don't get it at home.

One delicious dinner of food I didn't cook later, I fell asleep on the couch, waking up at 2 am to hear a screaming Avtalyon. He's been sleeping really, really badly this week, and Thursday night woke up every single time I put him down, all night long--the only sleep he got was in my arms, and I only got sleep sitting up. Friday he had some long naps in the stroller, and Friday night was back to his "but I can't sleep!"routine. I decided to try him in the little folding baby cot, instead of the carseat he's preferred his whole life, and guess what--he slept! Till 5 am! I, however, was wide awake, as was MHH. He gave up by around 4 and got up to learn, and I got up at 5 when the baby did for an hour and a half of playtime. At 6:30, the kids woke up, just as MHH got back from davening vasikin. I gave them a quick breakfast and then off to the park.

The morning was not off to a fabulous start; nobody had slept enough and the crankiness was already in evidence. Even with the carrot of a crack-of-dawn trip to a brand new park dangling in front of him, Barak whined and kvetched and rolled around the floor with the "I need you to get me dressed for me!" routine that drives me absolutely berserk. We finally made it out the door (and down the 5 flights of stairs) a little before 8, and walked outside just as the first non-vasikin-davening men were heading past with their tallitot tucked under their arms.

It is very quiet here generally but since we are in a religious neighborhood on Shabbos morning there were no cars at all. I pointed this out to Barak.

"Barak, is it so quiet? Why is it so quiet?"

"I don't know."

"Is it because it's Shabbos? Look, are here any cars?" Barak looked around but didn't seem to know what I was talking about.

"Are we allowed to drive cars on Shabbos?"

"No."

"So, look around. Are there any cars?" He pointed at the cars parked on the side of the road.

"Dere's cars over dere."

"Yes, but are here any cars driving? Do you see anybody driving cars?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because we're in Israel."

"Oh. Can I climb up dere?"

He didn't seem to be getting it. And then it hit me.

"Hey Barak, do you want to do something that you never ever did before in your whole entire life?"

Barak perked up. Lately this has been his thing--saying, "I never did that before," about whatever it is he's doing. "Yeah!"

"Do you want to cross the street by yourself?"

He looked at me as though I had completely lost my mind. "You can if you want." We stopped at the side of the road and I looked up and down to confirm that it was in fact completely deserted, which, so far as vehicular traffic anyway, it was. "Okay, go ahead." Barak's mouth at this point was gaping open and he was staring at me in complete shock. "It's okay. Go ahead." So he did, walking with an I-can't-believe-I'm getting-away-with-this grin, very quickly and carefully, across the street--all by himself. When he got there he turned around and started giggling madly. "I did it! I did it all by myself!" I crossed over with Iyyar. "Barak, how come I let you cross the street by yourself? Do I ever let you do that in America?" He shook his head. "Not in a hundred million years, right? But here it's okay because it's Israel [okay, it's a dati neighborhood in Israel] and it's Shabbos. So there's no cars. So it's okay."

Barak, still with the dazed grin, "I like Israel. I like crossing the street all by myself."

More later--Avtalyon's up. Again. Everyone had way too long naps this afternoon so I think it's going to be a wild kind of a night.

Quick pre-Shabbos roundup

It's almost time to light but I wanted to put up a brief post first. So, the trip was, you know... a trip with three kids four and under. Let's see--Iyyar had diarrhea, then he threw up, then he threw a few tantrums. I thought packing three changes of clothes for everyone in our carryons was overkill, but by the time we got off the first plane he was on his last pair of pants. Avtalyon nursed, slept, and screamed--sometimes all three at once. Barak was pretty good--he stayed up until the equivalent of 2 am on the first flight, finally conking out--you guessed it--just as the plane started to descend. Oh, and of course they lost our stroller.

But I do love BA. When Iyyar vomited all over himself, carseat, clothes, and floor, and started to scream, just as Avtalyon was already howling, and Barak decided to get in on the act by wanting me to start his movie (Horton Hatches the Egg) again, two stewardesses turned up with paper towels, plastic bags, and magic salt that dried up the vomit so I could clean it off. Then they brought us all water bottles. Nobody was anything but completely lovely and helpful--they gave the kids little activity bags, and when they saw we had kosher meals offered them juice but no (nonkosher) bags of pretzels. As we got on flight #2 with three exhausted childre, two of whom were screaming their heads off and the third of whom was wailing that he wanted his EGG, they didn't bat an eyelash. The flight attendant standing by the door was positively jolly about it. "Dear, dear!" he said to Iyyar, who was flat on the floor hysterically pounding his feet and fists. "Come come! It's not that bad!" One of the bright spots about changing at Heathrow is, of course, the WH Smith at every other departure gate, and I availed myself of the availability of Cadbury; Barak, naturally, sniffed out the chocolate, but was successfully deceived by my sneaky ploy of buying two Kinder Eggs (small) and did not notice the three bars of Dairy Milk with Caramel (large, and all mine).

Anyway, we're here now. We're staying in a sublet apartment which is bigger than what we have at home, if not quite as childproof; it is conveniently located about six minutes from the makolet and about as far from the falafel and pizza places. Yesterday I had the most fabulous sandwich of real genuine tomatoes (purchased with traces of real genuine dirt) on fresh squishy pita bread, followed by a dinner of one of the best falafel sandwiches I've ever had. The kids are slowly recovering from the jet lag, as are we; our kitchen is stocked after a trip to SuperZol courtesy of a friend of Tanta Rivka's, and we have challah, spreads, tomatoes and some Shabbos takeaway for dinner. The kids are in bed, the house is ready, and I'm just sitting here listening for the siren to tell me it's time to light.

There's the siren. Shabbat shalom.

The view from our mirpeset

And so it begins...

Barak is in his last week of playgroup. He goes to a very chareidi unlicensed playgroup, conducted by a very chareidi lady who teaches parsha in both Yiddish and English. She clearly has her act together, although does not really invite anything in the way of parental involvement. I wasn't thrilled with the playgroup at the beginning of the year, but Barak has really enjoyed it and at this point I would probably send Iyyar when it's time, if we're still here (which at this point it looks like we will be.)

I know that Barak has friends, because when we walk to school we pass the playground first and the kids who see him all start yelling his name. When we get there, he drops his bag and rushes off to play without a backward glance or a "Bye, Imma." And sometimes, he comes home talking about his friends.

One of his friends, who we'll call Dovie, lives around the corner from us. We pass his house every time we go to the park. The first time Dovie was outside playing when we went by was the first warm day in March. Barak spied Dovie, Dovie spied Barak, and it was like something from a movie--they ran screaming toward each other and then Barak turned around toward me, breathless with pleading, "Imma, can I play with Dovie? I want to play with Dovie!" We hung around and they played for an hour or so, until it got too much for me to juggle Iyyar and Avtalyon on the sidewalk. A week or so later, Dovie showed up with his mother on Shabbos to play; another time, we went over there. Then Dovie's mother invited us for a Shabbos meal and Dovie and Barak played happily for hours, the whole afternoon. Barak talked about Dovie. He talked about him a lot. Dovie, it appeared, was the bomb.

But since then, we've gone over there a few times to see if Dovie wants to play and he hasn't wanted to play. Last Shabbos we stopped by and when Dovie saw Barak, he got all stonefaced and told his father he didn't want to play. Barak said nothing but obviously felt bad. Then yesterday, we passed Dovie playing on the sidewalk. Dovie saw Barak and then carefully pretended not to see him at all, as we passed within about a foot; Barak looked at him and then didn't say hi either.

Oh dear.

Now, for the record I should mention here that in elementary school (and through high school) I was That Kid. The one that nobody plays with. I was overweight, I had the wrong clothes, I was big on vocabulary and low on social skills. Last picked in gym, not invited to birthday parties, picked on by bullies, etc. It was miserable, and I was miserable, and I would really, really hate for any of my kids chas v'shalom to go through the same thing.

Lately, I've heard Barak say, to Iyyar and once to me, "I'm not going to be your friend anymore!" It's pretty obvious where he's getting that. When he said it to me, I think I was making him a snack, and then I shrugged and said, "Okay, if you're not my friend I don't need to make you a snack," and left the room. That seemed pretty effective--he hasn't said it to me since--but still, it's coming from somewhere. Not necessarily Dovie, but that stage of childhood appears to be here.

I have to admit I was not so happy yesterday. I know that this kind of thing is, unfortunately, normal, and I can't shield my kids against it. But I did want to know what was going on, so I could have some idea of how to talk to Barak about it. This morning, on the way to school, I tried a sort of subtle approach.

"Barak, who's your friend?"

Instantly: "Dovie's my friend."

"He is?"

"Yeah. He's my friend."

"Okay. But yesterday, when we saw him, you didn't say hi to each other. And when we went over there on Shabbos he didn't want to play."

Barak, unperturbed: "Yeah. He doesn't say hi to me and he doesn't play with me but he's still my friend."

Okay. Yes. Well. Not "friend" as one would normally define the term, but still--he didn't seem upset, so I didn't push it. I did, however, ask the morah for a minute when we got to school.

"Has anything been going on between Dovie and Barak?" I gave her a quick round-up.

"Oh..." she said, and in that second both Dovie and Barak appeared, separately, within five feet of us. We switched to Hebrew.

"I think something happened with Dovie and Barak. Do you know if something happened? Barak used to talk about him all theh time but now Dovie doesn't want to play with him."

"The child behind me [Dovie, whose name she didn't want to say] is a difficult kid. He can be hard with the other kids."

"Did my son do anything I need to talk to him about? Is he behaving okay, and are the other kids playing with him?"

"Oh, your son? No! Your son is very, very, very sweet [m'od, m'od, m'od matok]. No, your son is great. It's not him at all."

I looked around and saw him happily playing with the other kids, and felt a bullet dodged, for the moment.

If you think I'm overreacting--well, I might be. But unless you, like me, were That Kid, you don't know what being That Kid is like. And I don't want Barak to know it either.

T minus FIVE DAYS!

And I have so much left to do...

The big thing that happened this week is that Sarah the Wonderful
is singlehandedly enabling us to go to Israel by taking Emese the cat for us while we're gone. Wait a minute, I hear you thinking. Sarah lives in Michigan. I don't know where Uberimma lives (or maybe I do) but I'm pretty sure she and Sarah don't live in the same city. Or state.

We don't. We most certainly don't. We don't even live in adjacent states. Enter Hermando, the Kitty Chauffeur, who I think is probably referring to me as the "gringa loca" even now, because I am paying him (gasp, choke, choke) to DRIVE MY CAT to Sarah's house.

Along with a batch of latkes that I have yet to make.

But will, as soon as I draw up a rental agreement for the family who is renting our apartment while we're going. Oh wait. I didn't mention that part? That in addition to packing, we're getting our place ready for someone else to live in. Yes, well... there's that. Oh, and I'm still working. And all that.

But Barak filled up his whole sticker chart, and tonight went to sleep enraptured by the strains of "When a Felon's Not Engaged in His Employment". So really, it's all going pretty well.

Updates

1. We got Avtalyon's passport yesterday. This is a saga in and of itself, in that it took us over two months just to get his birth certificate. And I filled it out at the hospital! By the time it came, it was too late to get a passport by mail, even with expedited service, and still too early to get an appointment at a regional passport center. This week, though, we passed the 2-week threshold for same-day service, and MHH, Barak, Avtalyon and I loaded up and headed out to our nearest one. I left Iyyar with the babysitter, since we couldn't all fit in the car and Barak would have fun while Iyyar probably wouldn't.

The whole experience was surprisingly painless; our appointment was at 1 pm and we were out of there, passport in hand, at 3:30. I was surprised at the number of absolutely brand-new babies in there--I saw two that couldn't have been more than a few weeks old. Barak enjoyed the whole experience, from looking out the vertiginously high office windows to campaigning for the Slurpee I got Abba while we waited (Barak got ice cream--I refuse to let him even taste Coke).

2. Other trip preparations are moving right along. Last week I went to Target and bought a ton of sunscreen, dental floss, Lego for my nephews, diapers and wipes (I know you can buy them there, but I want at least a week's worth to bring with) and so forth. I've already packed Avtalyon's clothes, out of his 6-12 month stuff, which he's almost into already. And most important, of course, I have carefully selected and packed the yarn and needles I will almost certainly not get to use the whole time we are there.

3. On Barak's potty front, so far, so good. He is close to filling up his sticker chart, the reward for which has been, to date, his choice of truck from the toy truck selection at Target. However, today, something extremely strange happened.

This would require a bit of back story to really tell properly, but the very short version is that during my misspent youth, I was quite fond of Pirates of Penzance. So much so, in fact, that I, um, ended up more or less memorizing the whole thing. Not on purpose, but just from the number of times I listened to it. Last night, during a very late email exchange with my knitting buddy Cecilia (who considerately lives in Sydney, and therefore is nearly always at her computer when I am) I developed a hankering to hear it again. Alas, the LP I owned in junior high is long gone, and I couldn't really justify spending $25 on a new set of CDs.

Tonight, at bedtime, Barak was being... resistant to going to bed. "I don't want the baby song," he told me peevishly. "Fine," I told him. "I'll sing you a pirate song instead." Whereupon I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and belted out "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry..."

Now, chances are none of you has ever heard me sing, and there is a very good reason for that. I'm not tone-deaf or anything but I am not very well endowed in the vocal department. Barak, however, thought it was... amazing. He stared at me, openmouthed and clearly, um, awed.

"Imma," he breathed, "Can you sing some more pirate songs please?"

I obliged with a rousing rendition of "When Frederick Was A Little Lad," followed by "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General." He wanted more. I started singing, "With Cat-Like Tread.." and then realized after a few "tarantaras" that I didn't know the segueway into the next bit.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember how it goes," I told him. "I need to listen to the CD to remember, and I don't have that CD."

"Could we get it?" Barak asked, practically whispering. "Could we get it, and listen to pirate songs?"

I considered. "Do you want that to be your sticker chart prize? Instead of a truck?"

"Yeah! I want the pirate CD instead of a truck."

I can see that Barak's musical tastes are going to be just as normal, boring, and run-of-the-mill as my own.

More overheard

Today, a friend of ours offered us a midafternoon lift to the supermarket. I don't usually go there but today it seemed like a good idea, so I went, leaving Iyyar and Avtalyon with Abba and bringing Barak.

We finished our shopping first and spent a few minutes sitting on the bench behind the checkouts. String cheese had been on sale, so I'd bought some (for the first time in months) and Barak was enjoying one while we hung out waiting.

"Imma, know what, Imma?"

"What?"

"You, and me, and Abba--we're not twins."

"No, you're right, we're not."

"But if... if you had a pink shirt and I had a pink shirt, den we would be twins."

"Oh, is that how it works?"

"Yeah. I sink so. I sink dat's how it works."

"Hmm. So, see that lady over there?" I pointed at a heavyset black woman in a fuchsia tank top.
"She's wearing a pink shirt." I looked around. "Also her. See that lady? She's wearing a pink shirt too." Young, thin Hispanic woman in a light pink t-shirt. "They're twins, right?"

Barak looked doubtful. "No, I don't sink so. Because her pink shirt is light and her pink shirt is dark. Dat's why dey're not twins."

Okay then.

What a difference four months make

The fabulous Israeli friend with whom I share babysitting commented to me a few weeks ago that it seems that I am always holding the baby. "Every time I see you, you are holding him! Why don't you put him down some of the time?" I said, knowing exactly how it was going to sound to her, "If I put him down, he cries." She rolled her eyes. "You need to teach him that he has to go down some of the time!" I was spoiling him, he was bossing me around, I was being manipulated. And so on.

A week or so later, the same friend gave us a ride home from the Yom ha-Atzmaut barbecue that will go down on record as the Coldest Yom ha-Atzmaut Barbecue Ever. Avtalyon, being in a moving vehicle and all, was in his car seat and oh, my goodness, he did not like that. At all. He objected. He objected most strongly, with his usual force, vigor, pathos, and volume. And my friend, my tough Israeli friend was, within two blocks of our departure, casting anxious glances into the rear-view mirror, asking if he was okay, or sick, or hungry, or... or... or... should she pull over so that I could hold him? I said that no, it wouldn't help, because he'd start crying again the second I put him back in and I wouldn't drive without him buckled into the car seat. He wailed the whole way home. Piteously. Miserably. Heart-rendingly. Loudly. And by the time we got home, tough Israeli friend, clearly on the point of nervous collapse, said, "Now I understand why you hold him."

Anyway, in this video you can see Avtalyon, begging, no, pleading to be picked up, while his mother heartlessly records it all on camera. You'd pick him up too, wouldn't you?

Overheard

Lately, Barak has been figuring out that a) he is Jewish, but not everyone is Jewish, and b) he eats kosher food, but not everyone eats kosher food. This has been a subject of some interest to him. There are two bakeries that we pass often; one is kosher, one not. The produce store we buy almost all our produce and dairy at also has a non-kosher deli counter. There is an ice cream man at the park who sells kosher ice cream sandwiches, but everything else in his freezer box is not kosher. Likewise, most of Barak's friends are Jewish, but not everyone he knows is: our neighbors are Hindu and Muslim, one of his babysitters is Christian, etc. A few months ago we were in the hamburger place (kosher, obviously) with a bunch of teenage boys in white shirts, black yarmulkes, black pants, tzitzis, and big payes. They were there with their rebbe, obviously having a siyyum. When it was time to bentch, Barak heard "rabosai n'vareich" and looked over--and then asked, in his carrying three-year-old voice, "Imma, are dey Jewish?" Just, you know, to be entirely clear.

Yesterday, Barak came down with a nasty sore throat and a little bit of a fever. I called the doctor, who said to bring him in for a strep test, which I did this morning. The nurse who took the swab is not my favorite and really hurt him--I've seen how she does things enough times and she just isn't gentle. (Yes, I've complained.) By the time we were done, Barak was crying and miserable and we decided that perhaps a trip to Baskin-Robbins on the way home was in order.

One cup of vanilla ice cream later, equilibrium was more or less restored, but Barak's sore throat was such that he didn't eat much of it. "I'm gonna put it in the freezer for later, when I poop potty," he informed me. And later, he did indeed reclaim the ice cream. I got it out for him and left him in the kitchen while I went to do something else. And that's when I heard this:

"My ice cream is kosher. I eat kosher because I'm Jewish. Jewish people eat kosher food and I'm Jewish and that's why I eat kosher food. I can eat the ice cream because it's kosher and I'm Jewish. People who aren't Jewish don't eat kosher. They don't eat ice cream. I'm Jewish so I can eat ice cream."

I'm going to let him think that for a while.

In other news, I took Iyyar and Avtalyon for their two-year and four-month checkups, respectively. Iyyar is, incredibly, average for weight and height--I say incredibly because of how much he still eats, even though he's slowed down quite a lot lately. And Avtalyon has rocketed from the third to the fifty-first percentile for weight. He charmed the socks off the nurse with his big chubby grins and dimples, then wailed most piteously when the lady he thought was his friend stabbed him with DTAP and Prevnar shots. But he forgave her quickly.

In which I figure out how to put video on the blog

Guess who this is?

Avtalyon, aged about twelve hours. He looks pretty different now. A lot bigger and fatter, for one thing; smilier and more vocal, for another.

I found the camera. Stay tuned--I'll try to get the Bologna Song for you.